Movimento and Vidder Discuss OTA Cybersecurity in July 2016 Issue of Smart Automotive

When cars first hit the road, people worried that excess speed would cause organ failure. While that fear was unfounded, there was still a real danger of deadly crashes. With the rise of the software-defined car, the concern that cars might start making their own decisions is similarly unfounded but hints at an actual problem: hackers could breach a car’s security, stealing personal information and compromising safety.

Writing in this month’s Smart Automotive, Movimento CTO Mahbubul Alam and Junaid Islam, CTO and founder of Vidder, discuss how cybersecurity is needed to protect the future of autonomous and self-driving cars. They explain how over-the-air updates are necessary for ensuring that cars are safe, highly-functioning, and able to keep up with the latest software developments, and they look at how a cloud-based security system can protect OTA transmissions—including security updates. In short, OTA makes cybersecurity stronger, and stronger cybersecurity makes the promise of OTA a reality.

As Alam and Islam write, “Automotive security cannot be an afterthought. It is necessary to make it an integral component throughout the design phase. The companies who achieve the various facets and forces required to achieve the vision of the crash-proof autonomous vehicles will be the clear leaders in the automotive ecosystem.”

The partnership between Movimento and Vidder, which “defeats credential theft, server exploitation and connection hijacking by dynamically connecting only authenticated users to protected servers and applications,” helps make the promise of OTA outlined by Alam and Islam a reality.